Friday, September 30, 2016

Shabbat Shalom! I regularly listen to a podcast called
Judaism Unbound. It is a project of the Institute for the Next Jewish Future,
and it is hosted by Lex Rofes, a rabbinical student with the Jewish Renewal
movement, and Daniel Libenson, the founder and president of the Institute. The
first few episodes went through the Books of the Torah and talked about current
Jewish themes based on each one of those. The second section of the podcast was
dedicated to New American Judaism: issues of intermarriage and new synagogue
models, generational gaps and reimagining what it could mean to be Jewish
today, specifically in the United States. Now, they’re on a stretch of episodes
interviewing new Jewish artists and the very physical elements of the reimagining
that they started to touch on a couple months ago.

This week I was catching up on the last few episodes, and I
listened to their interview of Nina Paley, which aired on September 9th.
Paley is an artist and filmmaker, and a very secular Jew. Her current work in
progress is called “Seder-Masochism” and it is, as you might have guessed,
about the Passover story. She tells Dan and Lex during the podcast interview
that when she was growing up, the only Jewish thing her family did was the
Passover Seder. Her father was a fierce atheist, so they never went to
synagogue and she never had any religious education. But they had a Seder. In
working on her current film project, she says she has become a “born-again
atheist” because she finds the story of the Exodus so horrendous and violent
that she cannot accept a God that is so wrathful or a religion that celebrates
such particularism.

As you might imagine, as a rabbi and a person who does
believe in a loving Judaism and has faith in God, a lot of her answers and the
ferocity with which she said some of them were a little jarring to me. Many
progressive Jews in the modern world don’t believe in a personal God or a
benevolent deity that directly interferes with the lives of humans. I’ve known
quite a few that were comfortable saying they didn’t really believe in God at
all, but still identified strongly as Jewish. But there was something about her
tone in the way she talked about being an atheist that suggested a strong
feeling of separation between herself and the organized Jewish world.
Nonetheless, she continues to self-identify unquestioningly Jewish in ethnicity
and culture.

Then she
said something about the Golden Calf story that really grabbed me. The Golden
Calf story isn’t exactly a part of our Passover narrative, but shortly follows
it in the wilderness of the Exodus book. She says she identifies very much with
those characters that accept the Golden Calf. She sees her own rejection of
Judaism and atheism reflected in that story, and remarks that “People like her”
have been a part of the Jewish people from time immemorial and they still are.
There is and always has been space for people like her in Judaism, no matter
how much the Jewish establishment wants to pretend like there isn’t or wasn’t.
And I really liked that, because I do think there’s room in Judaism for a broad
spectrum of beliefs and identities and that someone who identifies that
strongly with being Jewish in their families or at a Passover Seder, should see
themselves reflected in our ancient texts.

Now, you
might be wondering why I didn’t save this for Parashat Ki Tissa, when we read
the story of the Golden Calf as part of our regular Torah readings. But during
the podcast she also asks the question, “Where are we standing now?” She’s
talking about the Exodus story and standing at Sinai and the heretics who stood
before God and worshipped a Golden Calf instead. But this week’s Torah portion,
Nitzavim, also is about standing before God. That’s how nitzavim is usually
translated, in fact: standing. “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord
your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with
all the men of Israel.” Everyone is standing together at the precipice of
entering the Promised Land. From the great leaders of the community, down to
the water carriers and woodchoppers, they will all enter the Promised Land
together, and they are all equally responsible for upholding the covenant. They
are told that Torah is not far off, the covenant is not in heaven, a
relationship with Judaism or God is not beyond the sea. It’s all right there
with them, and it’s right here with us. Whether we read the Torah and
self-identify with Abraham or with Lot’s family, whether we see ourselves as
Levites or as the people who worship the Golden Calves. Whether we think we
would have been allowed into the Promised Land or been in the generation that
was forced to die in the desert, we are all here now. We all stand together
here this day, wondering what it means to be a Jewish American in the world
today.

Now, we
are about to enter the High Holy Days. We have already begun our season of
teshuvah by standing together as a single unit and saying some selichot
prayers. Sunday evening begins Rosh HaShanah, and we might find ourselves
asking, “Where are we standing now?” Are we standing at Mount Sinai, receiving
the Ten Commandments? Are we dancing with the Golden Calf? Are we standing at
the precipice of the Promised Land? Are we burying ourselves in a wilderness of
idolatry and mistrust? On Yom Kippur morning, we will read this portion again,
“Atem Nitzavim hayom culchem lifnei Adonai Eloheichem,” You are all standing
here this day before the Lord your God. May we find ourselves at that time
standing exactly where we want to be, with a clean heart and a purified soul.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Ki
Tavo, continues Moses’s reminders to the Israelites to obey the commandments in
order to be blessed. The Israelites are told that they are about to enter a
land flowing with milk and honey, and that they will have success in their
early agriculture. In return, they must bring their first fruits, the finest of
their labor and toil, to offer as sacrifices to God. They are commanded to
serve God with joy and with a sincere heart. Maimonides comments on both of
these commandments. On the first, he extrapolates that in a time with no
Temple, when we no longer offer physical sacrifices to God, we must still do
anything we do for the sake of God, with a sincere heart, in joy, and to our
fullest. “When one builds a house of worship,” he says, “it should be more
beautiful than their personal dwelling. When one feeds the homeless, it should
be the best and sweetest of their table. When one clothes the naked, it should
be the finest clothing.” On the second commandment, when the Torah says we
should do these things with a joyful heart, Maimonides adds, “For even though
you served God, you did not serve in joy, and that is the source for all your
afflictions.”

I think RaMBaM’s commentaries on this are linked, that we
can serve God by serving each other, and we must continue to do both with
gratitude and joy. But I think we can take away from these related comments two
distinct lessons. The first is the most important and the most in our control.
When giving tzedakah or doing community service, doing a small amount only when
it is convenient does not accomplish much. Giving away torn and worn out
clothing that is hardly wearable anymore doesn’t help those poor and the
homeless that much. Feeding the hungry tasteless or low nutrient food isn’t
real chesed. I’m not saying everyone should go broke giving tzedakah or quit
their jobs to start cooking full time for the local soup kitchen. But, we
should all be willing to set some time and money aside to share our blessings
in a meaningful way. This is the way we can give modern day sacrifices and
serve God in a modern context with no Temple or physical offerings.

If we do this with gratitude for all that we have and with
the knowledge that it is a righteous act, it can be a pleasant experience. If
we appreciate the opportunity to meet new people in our community and to learn
from someone whose life has been very different from ours, it’s a joyful and
holy experience. If you do so grudgingly
and miserably, it will not be fun, you will not appreciate or be able to learn
from the new people you meet, and you will be more likely to notice the money
you are losing by giving tzedakah or the time you are spending not doing
something you’d rather be doing. We can’t always help what mood we’re in at any
given moment, but I think this is what Maimonides meant when he said serving
God joylessly is the source of afflictions. A negative attitude can be
cyclical, and dragging our feet to accomplish important and holy tasks will
only make them harder and less pleasant.

Don’t hesitate to serve God, to serve your community, to
pray for a better world. Go through as much of life as you can with a positive
attitude and finding the good in small things. And may doing so bring you
peace, joy, and God’s blessing. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

Friday, September 16, 2016

Shabbat
Shalom. This week at Gesher Jewish Day School, I was tasked with teaching 2nd
graders about this week’s Torah portion. The goal according to the curriculum
map is to teach to the students that this week’s portion is about respect:
respect for women, captives, the world order, parents, the dead/life, property
and ownership, animals, safety, nature, dignity, marriage, family
relationships, cleanliness, the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger.
And for sure Parashat Ki Tetzei touches on all those topics, but they are not
all so easy to talk discuss with 2nd graders. The curriculum I was
given has very little in the way of materials and the materials I found
elsewhere, from G-dcast and Chabad, focuses on the respect for animals.

I
mentioned in passing last week that Parashat Shoftim expresses concern for
nature, and tells us not cut down fruit-bearing trees belonging to the city
with which we may be at war. This week’s Torah portion continues telling us to
be concerned with the natural world, and tells us not to be cruel to animals.
Even an animal belonging to a potential enemy should not be forced to suffer.
If we see an animal bearing too great a load, we should unburden it. In using
animals for farm work, humans should never pair two animals who are so
disparate in size that the smaller will suffer to keep up with the speed and
strength of the larger. Animals should not be muzzled with working on a farm,
but should be allowed to eat while they work. The second graders understood all
of these concepts, why they show respect for animals, and why it is important
for humans to take good care of animals and not abuse them. They had slightly
more trouble understanding the commandment in this week’s parasha telling us
that if we need food and we come upon a nest of an edible bird, we must shoo
the mother bird away from the nest first and only take the eggs. The students
said, “The mother bird will be sad when she returns and sees her babies are
gone!” But eventually they came to understand even this concept that the care
for the already living is more important than the potential life of the egg,
and the mother bird can always lay more. But if the eggs are hatched after we
eat the mother bird, the chicks will not be able to survive. For such young
students, whose diets are almost entirely decided by adults, they had an
impressive grasp on concepts of ethical and sustainable food choices and the
balance between respecting the natural world and maintaining a nutrient-rich
diet.

Explaining
the connections in the Torah portion to respecting humans was harder. Parashat
Ki Tetze starts off with explaining the proper rules of war, including taking
captives. It says that if a soldier kidnaps a beautiful woman from enemy
territory, he must wait a month before taking her as his wife. For the time in
which the rule was written and enacted, it’s clear to see its progressivism. If
the man is displeased with her, he must set her free. He is not to sell her to
another man or treat her as a slave. However, it doesn’t not specify if he must
properly divorce her and give her any compensation for kidnapping her. It’s also
pretty hard to believe that she’d be super into marrying this guy who took her
as booty from her home which he and his cohort ransacked and conquered, likely killing
her male relatives in the process. There are a lot of uncomfortable unanswered
questions about the scenario, and teaching it to 2nd graders was
daunting. Instead, we discussed in a general way the importance of showing
respect to every person, even if you think they are your enemy, and going into
war with an intention of mercy.

The
truth is, that’s what this rule was meant to convey for the time. When we read
the Torah, it is sometimes difficult to place ourselves in the time period for
which it was written, and this parasha is full of such moments. It’s important
we understand the context, the civilizations that surrounded the ancient
Israelites, and see where our ancestors tried to move their society forward. We
learn from this to continue to do that work. Our great sages of late antiquity
and the early middle ages knew we can’t really stone to death rebellious
children, though that too is a commandment in this week’s parasha. As I said
last week, they went to great lengths to ensure justice was always carried out
with the least amount of bloodshed possible. Killing an angsty teenager for disobeying
his father flew in the face of everything they knew to be holy, despite the
fact that our holy Torah says to do so. We know that we need to be able to read
the Torah with a critical eye and try to understand the commandment’s purpose
for its own time, so that we might understand how it is we should live today.

Lest you get too down on Parashat
Ki Tetze and vote it out the Torah entirely, it does also have plenty for us to
be proud of. This portion tells us to be kind to animals, even that of our
enemies. To lend money to our friends, family, and neighbors, interest-free. To
leave the corners of our fields so that the poor may eat without begging. To
care for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. To care for runaway slaves
and not return them to their masters. To keep our promises. To not play
favorites among your children. To pay your workers on time. I think from all
that, and more, it’s clear that the Torah is deeply concerned for treating
people, animals, and our environments with kavod.

The Torah is a Tree of Life, and
its mitzvot are meant to guide us toward righteous living, but sometimes it’s
the thought process or the intention behind the mitzvah rather than the rule
itself that we must learn from and adapt to modern times and our own life
situations. Of course, this is no easy task. It involves a lot of gut-checking
and a strong moral compass. But if we support each other and make clear our
expectations for a healthy community, a respectful society, and peaceful relationships,
we can work together to ensure that all people are treated as they want to be
treated. May we all find our own path through the minefields of the Torah, to
pleasantness and peace. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.